Buch, Französisch, Band Volume 42, 695 Seiten
Reihe: Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
La mission Foucher en Afghanistan (1922-1925)
Buch, Französisch, Band Volume 42, 695 Seiten
Reihe: Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
ISBN: 978-2-87754-240-1
Verlag: Peeters Publishers
À travers un large choix de correspondances, conservées notamment dans les riches fonds d'archives de la Société Asiatique, l'ouvrage raconte la genèse et le déroulement de cette longue mission, menée dans un Afghanistan encore presque inconnu des Occidentaux. Il en éclaire les enjeux et les acteurs diplomatiques, politiques et scientifiques, dans un premier quart du XXe s. marqué en Europe et en Asie par les collaborations et rivalités internationales.
In March 1922, Alfred Foucher (1865-1952), a well known French scholar and specialist of Indian studies, and his young wife, were invited by the Emir Amanullah to visit the recently independent kingdom of Afghanistan. Some months later Foucher signed a convention granting to France for the next 30 years a monopoly on archaeological investigation in Afghanistan. He remained there until November 1925. During his stay he headed several surveys and led the first excavation of Bactra, the famous city of ancient Central Asia. Such was the origin of the DAFA (Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan), still present in the country today, despite the current strife.
Through a careful study of the Société asiatique’s rich and varied collection of his letters, this book recounts the launching and painful progress of his mission to a country which was almost unknown to most Westerners at the time. This correspondence also reveals the high stakes for those who played significant diplomatic, political and scientific roles in the first quarter of the XXth century, when alternating collaboration and rivalry were the order of the day between leading European nations striving to strengthen their influence in Asia.